IT'S A DEAL: Afrika Owes (right), at Manhattan Supreme court yesterday with lawyer Elsie Chandler, could have her criminal record sealed sometime after she's freed.Steven Hirsch

“Preppy Gun Moll” Afrika Owes held her head up high yesterday as she voluntarily turned herself in to serve a summer on Rikers Island.

The unusual — but legally calculated — move is her first step toward an expected July gun-possession guilty plea and an eventual complete sealing of the one-time Deerfield Academy scholarship student’s criminal record, her lawyer explained.

Owes came to court holding a copy of Sister Souljah’s anti-drug-culture book, “The Coldest Winter Ever,” and with a cadre of supporters from her family and the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which now gets back its controversial $25,000 cash bail posted on Owes’ behalf.

“I’m grateful to the court for providing her with this opportunity to grow up,” the lawyer, Elsie Chandler, of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, said in announcing the negotiated arrangement in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday.

Under the deal brokered by Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin, Owes will plead guilty to conspiring with a 137th Street-based drug gang and possessing guns that prosecutors say she agreed to ferry among the gang’s ringleaders.

She’ll plead guilty on July 7 to the entire indictment against her — conspiracy and criminal possession of a weapon — and go straight back to Rikers for another two months.

The judge will set a release date in September that will free her in time to start her final year of high school, during which she’ll complete her SATs and apply to college, her lawyer said.

The judge has promised that if Owes completes high school and adheres to a strict, court-supervised program of curfews and supervision, he’ll grant her youthful-offender status, under which her criminal record will be sealed, her lawyer said.

Owes wants to personally accept responsibility for her crimes, but will not cooperate with investigators against her fellow alleged gang bangers — and hopes that the name of her high school will not be publicized, Chandler said.

“As a lawyer in New York City, I really hate it when my clients get shot,” she deadpanned.

Owes’ story had attracted attention earlier this year after the noted church went to bat for her teen despite, ironically, being among the Harlem institutions that had been begging Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. to do something about her alleged gang. Owes and her family are longtime parishioners.

“I think we saw a young lady today who was relieved, frankly, that it was all over,” said church Deacon Gerald Barbour. “You don’t see a young lady who is here by herself — she has the church behind her. This is a great day for sister Afrika Owes.”

Prosecutors say they caught Owes on a Rikers Island pay-phone tape taking a call from her jailed boyfriend, the 137th Street gang’s alleged kingpin, Jaquan Layne, in which he instructed her to carry three firearms to his brother, Malik, who is also charged.

In the call, Layne allegedly gives the then-16-year-old prep-schooler advice on surviving the perils of carrying firearms: “Make sure, head shots only; head shots only.”